The Force of History--Howard Bloom
In 1995, I published my first book, The Lucifer Principle: a Scientific
Expedition Into the Forces of history. It sold roughly 140,000 copies
worldwide and is still selling. Some people call it their Bible. Others say
that it was the book that predicted 9/11. And less than two months ago, on
November 13, 2015, some current readers said it was the book that explained
ISIS’ attacks on Paris. Why? What are the forces of history? And what do
they have to do with information science?
The Lucifer Principle uses evolutionary biology, group selection,
neurobiology, immunology, microbiology, computer science, animal behavior, and
anthropology to probe mass passions, the passions that have powered historical
movements from the unification of China in 221 BC and the start of the
Roman Empire in 201 BC to the rise of the Empire of Islam in 634 AD and that
empire’s modern manifestations, the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of Iran
and ISIS, the Islamic State, a group intent on establishing a global
caliphate. The Lucifer Principle concludes that the passions that swirl,
swizzle,
and twirl history’s currents are a secular trinity. What are that trinity’
s three components? The superorganism, the pecking order, and ideas.
What’s a superorganism? Your body is an organism. But it’s also a
massive social gathering. It’s composed of a hundred trillion cells. Each of
those cells is capable of living on its own. Yet your body survives thanks to
the existence of a collective identity—a you. In 1911,_[i]_
(file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20f
oundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn1) Harvard
biologist William Morton Wheeler noticed that ant colonies pull off the
same trick. From 20,000 to 36 million ants work together to create an
emergent property, a collective identity, the identity of a community, a
society,
a colony, or a supercolony. Wheeler observed how the colony behaved as if
it were a single organism. He called the result a “superorganism.”_[ii]_
(file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%2
0and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn
2)
Meanwhile in roughly 1900, when he was still a child, Norway’s Thorleif
Schjelderup Ebbe got into a strange habit: counting the number of pecks the
chickens in his family’s flock landed on each other and who pecked whom. By
the time he was ready to write his PhD dissertation in 1918, Ebbe had
close to 20 years of data. And that data demonstrated something strange.
Chickens in a barnyard are not egalitarian. They have a strict hierarchy. At
the top is a chicken who gets special privileges. All others step aside
when she goes to the trough. She is the first to eat. And she can peck
any other chicken in the group. Then comes chicken number two. She is the
second to eat. And she can peck anyone in the flock with one notable
exception. She cannot peck the top chicken. Then comes chicken number
three,
chicken number four, and so on. Each one cannot peck the chickens above her
on the social ladder. But each has free rein to peck the chickens below.
Finally, there’s the bottom chicken, a chicken everyone is free to peck but
who is free to peck no one. Ebbe called this a “peck order,” a pecking
order, a dominance hierarchy.
And in 1976, Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined two new
terms._[iii]_
(file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2
015.docx#_edn3) He observed that biological life, all of it from
bacteria to bathing beauties, depends on the evolution of what Dawkins called “
replicators,” molecules that can make copies of themselves. Then Dawkins
spotted a newer kind of replicator at work. The first biological replicators—
genes--did their thing in primordial puddles. The new replicator worked in a
puddle of a radically different kind—the puddle of the human mind.
Dawkins observed that we see replicators at work when our mind fixates on a
song
we hate and plays it over and over again, no matter how vigorously we wish
it away. That song is using our mind to make more copies of itself. But
the most important replicators in the soup of the human mind are not pop
songs, they’re ideas. Dawkins called these mind-based replicators “memes.”
Superorganism, the pecking order, and ideas—memes--that’s the holy
trinity of The Lucifer Principle. That’s the holy trinity that drives the
forces
of history.
Here’s how it works. Social groups compete. They battle for pecking order
position in a hierarchy of groups. They strive to be at the top of that
hierarchy and to avoid the fate of the chicken at the bottom. What’s the
main thing over which groups compete? It’s a badge of group membership. A
badge of what molecular biologist Luis Villarreal and philosopher Guenther
Witzany call “group identity.”_[iv]_
(file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20informa
tion%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn4) That badge? A cluster of memes.
A knot of replicators that live in a sea of minds. The Babylonians
competed with the Assyrians and the Medes. They competed using different
languages. They competed using different ideas of what clothes to wear, what
was
right and wrong, and, most important, what gods to worship._[v]_
(file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%2
0foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn5) The
eight states that made war in China in from 475 BC to 221 BC also had
competing languages, religions, and philosophies. Rome set itself against
the
Persian Empire using the same tools of group identity: a different language,
a different clothing style, a different way of worship, and a different
pantheon of gods-- different ideas. And today militant Islam—in the form of
the Islamic State and what’s left of al Qaeda--is pitting itself against the
West, Russia, and China using the ideas of Islam. Using the words and
deeds of Mohammed, words and deeds that are still making copies of
themselves in new minds 1,384 years after Mohammed’s death.
Pecking order competitions between groups, pecking order competitions
based on ideas, are the meat and potatoes of the headlines. They are the
forces of history.
Where does information come into this? Everywhere. A fact that we shall
have to discuss.
Why? Because communication, sociality, and information exchange are at
the very heart of this cosmos. So are competition and hierarchy. Not to
mention the ancestor of superorganism-ness, the foremother of group identity—
the cosmos’ obsession with mobs, gangs, flocks, and massively integrated
social entities. Social entities that range from protons, atoms, galaxies,
stars, planets and moons to galaxy superclusters. What do all of these things
have in common? What do they share with megamolecules, DNA, cells, and
bacterial colonies, not to mention ants, nations, and ISIS? Competition,
hierarchy, and group identity. Superorganism, pecking order, and ideas—the
holy trinity of the Lucifer Principle. And guess what else they share?
Information!
____________________________________
_[i]_ (file:///C:/cnt/the%20n
ew%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.doc
x#_ednref1) Jürgen Tautz, The Buzz about Bees: Biology of a
Superorganism, Berlin: Springer, 2008, p. 3,.
_[ii]_ (file:///C:/cnt/th
e%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.do
cx#_ednref2) William Morton Wheeler, The Termitodoxa, Or Biology And
Society, The Scientific Monthly, February, 1920.
_[iii]_
(file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.d
ocx#_ednref3) Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1976.
_[iv]_
(file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.do
cx#_ednref4) Luis P. Villarreal, Origin of Group Identity: Viruses,
Addiction and Cooperation, New York: Springer, 2009.
_[v]_
(file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.doc
x#_ednref5) For more on the battle of the gods in Mesopotamia, see Howard
Bloom, The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates, Buffalo, NY:
Prometheus Books, 2016.
____________
Howard Bloom
Author of: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces
of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post),
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st
Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker),
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("A
tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The
Atlantic),
The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock
your world." Barbara Ehrenreich),
How I Accidentally Started the Sixties ("Wow! Whew! Wild!
Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and
The Mohammed Code ("A terrifying book…the best book I've read on Islam."
David Swindle, PJ Media).
www.howardbloom.net
Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University.
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space Development
Steering Committee; Founder: The Group Selection Squad; Founding Board
Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project;
Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of
Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American
Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and
Evolution
Society, International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory Board
Member, Lifeboat Foundation; Editorial Board Member, Journal of Space
Philosophy; Board member and member of Board of Governors, National Space
Society.
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